Router company that threatened a reviewer loses Amazon selling license

Update 5/8/2014 19:44 CT: On Thursday, Mediabridge Products posted an official statement about this incident to its Facebook page, clarifying its position and saying that Amazon has revoked its selling privileges. However, Mediabridge subsequently deleted the statement and its entire Facebook presence after receiving negative comments.

In the statement, the company says that it did not actually sue the Amazon reviewer, but that it did insist that the reviewer's "untrue, damaging, and disparaging statements" be taken down. "It’s our sincere belief that reasonable people understand that not only is it within our rights to take steps to protect our integrity, but that it should be expected that we would do so when it is recklessly attacked," Mediabridge Products wrote. "The reviewer has since changed his review completely to remove the libelous statements, but unfortunately not before having an army attack us on the internet."

The company did not give any clue as to the terms of Amazon's rescinding of Mediabridge's selling license, but only said at the end of its statement, "Unfortunately, as a result of our attempt to get this reviewer to do the right thing & remove his untrue statements about our company, Amazon has revoked our selling privileges. Many hard-working employees whose livelihood depended on that business will likely be put out of a job, by a situation that has been distorted & blown out of proportion."

Original story: Lawyers for Mediabridge Products, a wireless network device manufacturer, sent a scathing letter to a redditor on Monday, threatening to sue him unless he deletes his negative review of one of the company's products on Amazon.com.

After posting the negative review of a Medialink Wireless Router product—which became the “most helpful” negative review on Amazon.com—an attorney for Mediabridge sent him a letter explaining that the company “zealously guards its hard-earned reputation” and that “you have harmed Mediabridge and we intend to hold you liable for all damages sustained.”

The reviewer, who goes by "trevely," posted the letter to reddit, soliciting responses (and receiving lots of them) and requesting help with his legal fees. “If you want to contribute to my legal fees, just message me for a link. I haven't been served yet, so hopefully it won't come to that,” the redditor explained.

"Never in my life have I been so relentlessly bullied by a company,” he wrote on Amazon. "Please keep that in mind when considering whether to purchase any products from Medialink. And if you decide to leave a negative review, don’t use your real name like I did."

In the letter, Mediabridge’s attorney, Neal Jacobs, explains that the company plans to take legal action against the reviewer for his "illegal campaign to damage, discredit, defame and libel Mediabridge and/or to engage in other tortious, wrongful, and/or illegal conduct directed against Mediabridge."

Jacobs details a number of the claims that the company says are false and misleading, including that “Mediabridge has falsified (“faked”) reviews” on Amazon to boost sales and that the Medialink wireless router in question “is identical to another router and that Mediabridge/Medialink only rebranded that same router.” The letter continues, “Make no mistake, these libelous statements you made in a public forum are false and you cannot support them with any proof.”

The company demands that “in order to avoid this coming to litigation” he must delete his negative product review on Amazon within three days of receiving this letter, stop all “defamatory and injurious” conduct toward the company, and agree to never purchase nor comment upon a Mediabridge product again.

Mediabridge was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday morning.

To be fair, both the mentioned issue in the letter are questions of fact. But even if neither are true, did the reviewer maliciously and knowingly lie about those facts? I wouldn't want to be the lawyer that had to prove that in court.

I won't be recommending Medialink products to anyone unless they drop the issue and apologize - not that I normally recommend Medialink products anyway, they are middling quality at best.

I went into this article ready to believe the company and lawyer were terrible wastes of existence. Having done libel training, reading the letter it was apparent they are on solid legal ground. Citing specific factual claims that they claim are false and defamatory, even bolding the specific statements quote from the review.

If you get to this point in a libel suit against you, you have lost, unless you go forward with a trial and can prove according to a preponderance of the evidence that the factual claims are true (or it's otherwise privileged).

Libel law is counter-intuitive and full of scary gray areas. For example, reviews are seldom sued for because it can't be libelous if the claim couldn't be proven true or false in court--one of those gray areas--no matter how defamatory. He's not getting sued for saying "this router sucks."

Then the legal letter veered off into suggesting the high number of helpful remarks was part of some campaign. OK, now we can declare they are paranoid and irrationally vindictive. They deserve the full force of the Streisand Effect coming down on them.

To be fair, both the mentioned issue in the letter are questions of fact. But even if neither are true, did the reviewer maliciously and knowingly lie about those facts? I wouldn't want to be the lawyer that had to prove that in court.

I won't be recommending Medialink products to anyone unless they drop the issue and apologize - not that I normally recommend Medialink products anyway, they are middling quality at best.

When I checked just a moment ago, there were 719 one-star reviews of this router vs. over 1500 five star reviews. Why was this reviewer singled out? Is the router company going after all 700 one star reviewers?

Found this on medialink's website. Should Linksys be filing litigation?

"awseome!!"jay on 1/20/2013 7:02:17 PMRating:

Review: Way better than my previous linksys router, which is wrt320n. wrt320n getting hot easily, unstable, and drops the signl. And the thing is, i paid over $100 for wrt320n. Now, I'm so happy with medialink's router. Trust me, medialink is way better than linksys. The service, product, and of course price too.

According to Wikipedia (yeah, yeah, I know), Florida and Pennsylvania have anti-SLAPP laws. It would seem that his strategy would be to simply sue under anti-SLAPP laws and wait for the money to roll in.

I wonder what the bizzaro-world would be like in which companies that “zealously guards its hard-earned reputation” simply focused on making products that don't suck as the means to do so?

After all, a no-name rebrand of a somewhat even more obscure OEM's whitebox product seems a little lacking in credit-worthy rep, period.

2nd thought - maybe we're seeing the emergence of the next mass lawyer-troll scam practice - searching Amazon & others for negative product reviews (and there are so very, very many crappy products out there), then reporting it back to the company in question as defamation with the generous offer to go after the perpetrator for a nominal fee?

It's hard to argue against that when the review contains a gem like this

TITLE: Prius installation., March 14, 2014

REVIEW:These headlights were easier to install than factory bulbs. I have tried several types of bulbs but these out shine them all. If they are as good for driving as they are supposed to be I will be installing a set on my Tacoma. Thank you Medialink.

From this article, it sounds like more than just a negative review, though. It’s not just “this product sucks.” If the reviewer claimed that the company posted fake positive reviews, and if that claim is false, I can see why a company would want to take action. That would be a statement that could harm its business if people believed it. I’m not saying it’s smart of the company to threaten to sue, just that this sounds like more than a plain negative review.

It seems likely that the reviewer has no actual knowledge of fake reviews and of renaming hardware. Wouldn't it be wise to delete such information from the post (without deleting the entire negative post)?If you stick to opinions and first-hand knowledge, then it can't be libel, right?

The growth in threatening legal action against people who write negative reviews on sites is extremely worrying. I was reading an article on wedding photographers that were including clauses in their contract that the people using their services were not allowed to leave negative reviews of the service otherwise they could be sued for damages. I don't understand the US legal system so I don't know how these cases work in terms of setting precedents and if there's unfair contract terms that can't be enforced but it seemed completely ridiculous.

It obviously says a lot about the company when they legally threaten anyone giving them a negative review rathee than try to sort it out. I'm always suspicious when I see completely positive reviews as if there's a decent number of reviews there's usually someone who has had a bad experience, their expectations were ridiculous or their review was just nonsense but their existence gives a lot more credibility to the review system.

Que Streisand effect..This should be something taught in law school by now. So often you hear about companies doing stuff like this (usually by their legal department) that it seems like a factor that should be in consideration.

When I checked just a moment ago, there 719 one-star reviews of this router vs. over 1500 five star reviews. Why was this reviewer singled out? Is the router company going after all 700 one star reviewers?

According to the article it was rated the most helpful and therefore would be shown at the top of the reviews. Generally that means the review was probably well written and therefofe discouraging people from buying the product, it says a lot for the company that their response was to send legal threats.

Well, as I do not own one, it would be unethical to write a review, but I definitely went on and marked a bunch of one star reviews as Helpful, because when I was looking at a router a while back, that is the kind of review that was very helpful to me.

In the end I got tired of dealing with crap routers, bit the bullet and bought an Airport Extreme. Best router I have ever had by a mile.

Found this on medialink's website. Should Linksys be filing litigation?

"awseome!!"jay on 1/20/2013 7:02:17 PMRating:

Review: Way better than my previous linksys router, which is wrt320n. wrt320n getting hot easily, unstable, and drops the signl. And the thing is, i paid over $100 for wrt320n. Now, I'm so happy with medialink's router. Trust me, medialink is way better than linksys. The service, product, and of course price too.

I'm pretty sure any time you see the words "trust me" in a review they are not to be trusted.

I have this router (or is it the 150mbps version? **Edit - it's the 150mbps version) Either way.. It's really not that great of a router. It's web interface always left me wondering and I ended up getting an Airport Extreme 5th gen to replace an asus Rt N56u that also seemed (no matter how hard I tried) to have connection drops. The Medialink was cheap and *worked* but it's range was horrible....

Amazon should remove every negative review of a Mediabridge product and they should do it today. The way they should do this is by removing every Mediabridge product they sell from inventory and ban any future sales of their products.

To be fair, both the mentioned issue in the letter are questions of fact. But even if neither are true, did the reviewer maliciously and knowingly lie about those facts? I wouldn't want to be the lawyer that had to prove that in court.

I won't be recommending Medialink products to anyone unless they drop the issue and apologize - not that I normally recommend Medialink products anyway, they are middling quality at best.

I went into this article ready to believe the company and lawyer were terrible wastes of existence. Having done libel training, reading the letter it was apparent they are on solid legal ground. Citing specific factual claims that they claim are false and defamatory, even bolding the specific statements quote from the review.

If you get to this point in a libel suit against you, you have lost, unless you go forward with a trial and can prove according to a preponderance of the evidence that the factual claims are true (or it's otherwise privileged).

Libel law is counter-intuitive and full of scary gray areas. For example, reviews are seldom sued for because it can't be libelous if the claim couldn't be proven true or false in court--one of those gray areas--no matter how defamatory. He's not getting sued for saying "this router sucks."

Then the legal letter veered off into suggesting the high number of helpful remarks was part of some campaign. OK, now we can declare they are paranoid and irrationally vindictive. They deserve the full force of the Streisand Effect coming down on them.